I saw some in Germany 30-40 years ago but no doubt they are much rarer today.
I only saw one at a car show on YouTube! But never in person. I wonder how many are left?
They have car clubs over there where you can see multi million dollar fifty and hudred year old classics every weekend.
I even got to see two of the old 12cyl Duesenberg’s from the twenties that would run 155mph on a flat straightaway.
One of my clients over there is still spending money that was made before our civil war. HA!
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I wonder just how much that car inspired the original batmobile?
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Yep, and about 245.0000 of it was the custom work HA~!
It just hit me how similar the lines were when I saw the still, I didn’t realize they’d done their own conversion with the 56 to make their own BMB.
A very interesting thread … especially the part on the 1950s, and what has happened to America.
So, I would like – as a pre-Boomer, born in 1943, who grew up in Texas – to propose the following:
(1) A re-assertion of the things that make for a decent society – as opposed to what the US is becoming now – is possible. (Some people don’t believe this – they have surrendered to despair. This surrender makes their despair more likely. If you are one of those who believe All Is Lost, stop reading now.)
(2) We will NOT simply reproduce the 1950s, which had significant problems – but we can substantially change things for the better, while retaining the social changes of the 1960s which saw the advance of women and racial minorities into full citizenship, which was good thing.
(3) The 1950s were not the 1920s. They were post-New Deal. A good society will NOT be an economically libertarian return to every man for himself. In fact, repairing the damage will require substantial positive action by government. Sorry, this is just reality. (If you deny this, then you must be for unrestrained free trade, which will continue to hollow out the American working class.)
(4) Some of the things we will need to do:
----------(a) Regain control of our manufacturing base, especially with respect to strategic materials and products. Fair trade, yes, but not at the expense of destroying our communities.
----------(b) Rethink American foreign policy, and find a happy medium between isolationism and unrestrained interventionism. As a rough guideline: strong alliances with stable democratic allies – who pay their fair share of the costs – yes; attempts to bring Transgender Outreach Centers to Absurdistan, no. And some really serious, cold-blooded thinking about relations with Russia, China, and Iran. More about that in another thread, but as a bottom-line: we should only have the enemies we absolutely must have, enemies who are such by their choice. Just because a country has an evil leadership does not necessarily make it an active threat to us. Plus: all nations have national interests and their citizens have national pride.
------- (c ) Reshape the education system, top to bottom. Basically, this means a serious School Choice program for K12, and some way – don’t ask me how – to diversify Higher Ed and break the Leftist monopoly there.
------- (d) Design a social welfare system that strengthens, and does not destroy, families and personal responsibility. There’s a guy, Robert Cherry, who has done a lot of work in this field. The so-called “Clinton Welfare Reforms” (forced on Clinton by Republicans) show the way.
------- (e) Tilt post-secondary education away from college-at-all-costs, and increase the importance of serious ‘vocational’ skill-based education. To learn how to become a nurse, or a web-site designer, should not require taking courses in Feminist Anthropology. This goes against my grain, since I think higher education SHOULD have everyone studying philosophy and history and ideas in general, but that’s not possible in the current situation where the Left controls the cultural apparatus. Some imaginative thinking about constructing a high-quality online course is needed here.
------- (f) Carry out a substantial infra-structure building and rebuilding project. We already do this, it’s just done in Afghanistan. (The way the world is going, I would favor a massive ‘Social Defense’ Fallout Shelter program, but there is plenty of work to be done just repairing highways, bridges, and dams, not to mention The Wall, plus all the walls we will need to defend our coastal cities as the globe heats up.
------ (g) A large-scale Nuclear Power plant construction program.
There’s a book everyone (every conservative) here should read: F.H. Buckley’s The Republican Workers Party – How Trump’s Victory Drove Everyone Crazy, and Why It Was Just What We Needed.
I think that it’s time for all conservatives to throw themselves into practical politics, to try to bring about the transformation of the Republican Party which I have outlined. Anyone who is serious about this should PM me, as this project is in the process of forming and moving forward right now.
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By the way, this thread has a lot of interesting sub-themes: modernity, the role of the post-modernists, etc … I think they are attempts to analyze how modern history is being made – because the changes in the US are also, mutatis mutandis, have occurred/are occurring in other countries as well. We have to sort out what is just ‘modernity’ – the inevitable results of everyone getting an education, economic development which turns illiterate rural peasants into urban factory workers and bank clerks – and what was specific to the US, with the capture/colonization of the ‘cultural apparatus’,starting with Higher Ed, by the Boomer generation, which received its political education about its own country watching the bodies of little Black girls being removed from a Birmingham church, and napalmed children in Vietnam … but … this is another discussion.
What is VITALLY important right now – this year… in the period of the runup to the election in November … while everything is being thrown into the air by this Communist Chinese Virus … is for conservatives to START DOING SOMETHING DIFFERENT.… it’s fun to on on discussion boards and fence with each other, or with progressives … but …if we just carry on doing that, … we are doomed.
We’ve go to intervene in history. That means a struggle for power within the Republican Party, first of all, to turn it into a party for the social renewal of America, not just one fighting a rear-guard action against the advancing Left which is destroying it.
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Good points, but some points I’d quibble with
On the “advance of women”. …Women in middle class 50’s had it made. IMO. A family NEEDS woman at home with the kids and shopping at Bloomingdale’s with girlfriends at fun luncheons and PTA Let the Men slave away at work while women are having fun.
I don’t like this point, on the grounds that as long as terrorists exist…nuke plants are targets. And, as long as people are prone to errors, Nuke plants are not safe.
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The original bat mobile.
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A tribute to Sterling Moss. Funny how some enter our thoughts for no apparent reason then this is the sad news. The universe vibrates such frequencies to those listening.
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He passed on Easter. I had just exclaimed “He’s still alive!”.
My own mother lived past Easter and just passed away on Tuesday in my arms-- a week till her 97th birthday. The pain of loss is intense. All of it is carried in the mind and heart and cannot be avoided.
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Wow! I am very sorry to hear about your mom! I guess she will be right there with Sterling. My sincere condolences!
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The memories associated with the death of loving parents will be with you 'til you die. My father died on my birthday almost forty years ago and I still miss him. Mother lived several years longer, but is also gone from me.
In a way, prolonged grieving conflates to self pity. I manage now to reverse that baggage by recalling pleasant memories and the lessons in living that both my parents gave me.
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Not much to argue against here Doug at all. Well done.
One thing we must do to reform education is to return to putting an emphasis for training in “the trades”. School “shop programs” have all but been eliminated as we got stuck on the idiotic notion that everyone needed to go to college and that if they didn’t they’d never do better than minimum wage.
One of the biggest problems we have with existing manufacturing is that it’s all but impossible to find Americans that can read a ruler, work with fractions and/or who have even a vague understanding of the use of tools.
Even someone working on a computer operated lathe, mill, or 3D Printer needs to have a basic understanding of how they work, measurements etc and trade/technical education starting in Jr High is where that foundation needs to start being built.
This is true. I still remember asking my mom about the women’s lib movement. She looked at me and said something to the effect of, "Why would I want to climb down off of the pedestal your father puts me on to be his equal?
We’re at a point now where in a two parent family one parent is working just to pay the taxes and insurance while the other works to pay the bills, raise the kids, pay the mortgage etc.
This is a direct result of flooding the labor market with both single and married women working full time instead of not at all or just part time for things like Christmas money or to help put money away for the kids to got to school.
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